Document browsing such as web browsing constitutes a major portion of Internet usage by individuals and user experience with browsers is the basic metric in the choice of web browsers. Over the past decade, a number of web browsers such as Microsoft Internet Explorer, Firefox, Netscape, AOL Explorer etc. emerged with oft-times intense competition for the user audience. Many outstanding features have surfaced, including toolbars, plug-ins, shortcut maintenance and even built-in editing and composing. Most recently, tabbed menus were introduced for maintaining simultaneous contexts. Despite those improvements, the user has not been adequately supported from a time/motion vantage point. For example, a major flaw is the requirement for the most common repetitive motion circumstance: the browsing of adjacent hyperlinks in a web page. The user “clicks” a hyperlink to follow a news article in a list area containing multiple news articles. It is necessary to use the back button before progressing to other articles in the list. Furthermore, if the list is generated from web directory browsing, there is no provision to automatically setup a “screen show” mode to allow the user to casually inspect items, such as pictures without laborious interaction.
FIG. 1 shows prior art web browser displayed page. In a typical web browser system 101, a user interacts with a dash panel 103 to specify navigations, specified as Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) to selected web sites. The process of navigation instructs the facility of the web browser to load a target URL in the manner conventional in the art. The invention is not limited to the specific protocol or versions of protocols to accomplish this. The typical target page is displayed in the main frame of the browser 104. Certain navigation enablement is allowed for example, for navigating to prior pages 102 and previously visited (in the forward direction) 103 pages. Logically, these navigation means can be disabled for use until circumstances permit the “Back” or “Forward” navigation buttons. As is typical of web pages there can be areas wherein clicking can instigate a navigation to a URL. Common text and graphic locations of this nature are called hyperlinks 105. The invention is not limited to the placement or physical proximity of hyperlinks listed or embedded in a Web page. It is expected that the user recognizes a list of one kind or another and may wish to sequentially visit said hyperlinks in an orderly manner. That manner may be performed manually and/or by a passive “screen-show” type of mechanism.
FIG. 2 illustrates the prior art as it applies to a common navigation process. The web browser 201 provides at least one hyperlink of interest 202. In the example illustrated in FIG. 2, there are at least two hyperlinks of interest, 202 and 209. Clicking a first hyperlink 202 causes navigation 203 of the web browser to a new target page 204 or section. In this invention, a hyperlink can refer to a distinct URL that leads on current page or off-page. The invention is not limited to the real target for a hyperlink. It will operate properly according to the specification of the hyperlink. After viewing said web page, the user can use the “Back” button 205 to navigate to the earlier web page 201, thus revisiting it. Only then is the next target hyperlink visible 209 for the user to click 206 to invoke the display of another article of web page 207. To advance to additional web pages, the user may again return to the primal page 201 via clicking on back navigation 208, and continue the process.